The first thing any socialist, of whatever hue, needs to understand about the war in Yemen is that none of the leaders of any of the many factions involved has objectives worthy of support. Former president Ali Abdullah Saleh — the kleptocrat who ruled the country autocratically for thirty-three years — has allied with the Houthis, a familial, fundamental Zaydist movement that believes that only the prophet’s descendants have the right to rule.

They are fighting Saleh’s former vice president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, the southerner elected to implement the transition to a “new Yemen” following the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) agreement of November 2011, which outlined a democratic transition process. The GCC states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates) as well as the international community endorsed and supported this agreement. The transitional regime collapsed in 2014, leading to civil war and the Saudi-led coalition intervention in March 2015.

What led Yemen down this path to chaos? After all, the country includes the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, the only socialist state in the Arab world. In the 1970s, the other Yemeni state, the Yemen Arab Republic, had a strong rural movement based on community and tribal solidarity, which organized, financed, and managed development initiatives. The Republic of Yemen, born in 1990, was the only democracy in the Arabian Peninsula. However flawed, it held real multiparty elections.